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Adam Haberberg
With the same élan and wit that inform her internationally acclaimed and award-winning plays, Yasmina Reza’s second novel, Adam Haberberg , revels in the tragicomedy of one man’s midlife crisis.
While slumped on a park bench in Paris, a man is suddenly hailed by an old female classmate whom he has not seen since high school. The poor guy is, of course, a writer. Morose, panicked about his health, preoccupied with his marriage miseries and the fiasco of his recent book launch, he finds himself stranded in the desert of male middle age. And now there’s the strange business of this woman, who may or may not still be in love with him. Somehow he finds himself riding in her Jeep, riding to her place, not for any of the sensational reasons you might imagine, but because he sort of got stuck in a conversation without any chance of escape. Now he has to find his way out—and home.
A bitingly funny, lethally wise portrait of a hapless nonhero’s big adventure.
While slumped on a park bench in Paris, a man is suddenly hailed by an old female classmate whom he has not seen since high school. The poor guy is, of course, a writer. Morose, panicked about his health, preoccupied with his marriage miseries and the fiasco of his recent book launch, he finds himself stranded in the desert of male middle age. And now there’s the strange business of this woman, who may or may not still be in love with him. Somehow he finds himself riding in her Jeep, riding to her place, not for any of the sensational reasons you might imagine, but because he sort of got stuck in a conversation without any chance of escape. Now he has to find his way out—and home.
A bitingly funny, lethally wise portrait of a hapless nonhero’s big adventure.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Yasmina Reza
55 books621 followersYasmina Reza began work as an actress, appearing in several new plays as well as in plays by Molière and Marivaux. In 1987 she wrote Conversations after a Burial, which won the Molière Award for Best Author. Following this, she translated Kafka's Metamorphosis for Roman Polanski and was nominated for a Molière Award for Best Translation. Her second play, Winter Crossing, won the 1990 Molière for Best Fringe Production, and her next play The Unexpected Man, enjoyed successful productions in England, France, Scandinavia, Germany and New York. In 1995, Art premiered in Paris and went on to win the Molière Award for Best Author. Since then it has been produced world-wide and translated into 20 languages. The London production received the 1996-97 Olivier Award and Evening Standard Award. Screenwriting credits include See You Tomorrow, starring Jeanne Moreau and directed by Didier Martiny. In September 1997, her first novel, Hammerklavier, was published.
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January 11, 2019
صحبت مدام از مرگ و نزدیک شدن به پنجاه سالگی؛ دورهای که هر روز که میگذرد دکترها بیماری جدیدی را در آدم تشخیص میدهند. از این نظر و نیز از لحاظ بلاتنفس روایت کردن داستان و چاشنی هرازگاهیِ طنز، کتاب مرا یاد «یکی مثل همه»ی فیلیپ راث انداخت.
*
«حالا هم مجبورم سمفونی باخ گوش کنم تا مطمئن شوم که انسان برتر هم وجود دارد.»
«اما آدمها به این سادگی نمیمیرند. آدمها نمیمیرند، بلکه در اندوه و جنون با هم میمانند.»
«آقای دکتر لطفا مرا دوست داشته باشید، مراقبم باشید و نجاتم دهید.»
*
«حالا هم مجبورم سمفونی باخ گوش کنم تا مطمئن شوم که انسان برتر هم وجود دارد.»
«اما آدمها به این سادگی نمیمیرند. آدمها نمیمیرند، بلکه در اندوه و جنون با هم میمانند.»
«آقای دکتر لطفا مرا دوست داشته باشید، مراقبم باشید و نجاتم دهید.»
September 2, 2014
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/8492492...
A writer is a man trying to save himself from himself. A man who, in order to hold on to a little momentum toward the future, attempts to exchange his own existence for that of words.___Adam Haberberg, from the novel Adam Haberberg
For my ten-year class reunion back in 1982 I was irreverently drunk and rode to the head table, rumbling up through the main aisle in the meeting hall of a Catholic church we had rented, riding on the back of a large motorcycle driven by a fellow classmate, and Vietnam War veteran, Jim Anderson. I have not seen him again, nor the others, since. This summer of 2012, in my small hometown in Michigan, they held the 40th high school reunion of this same graduating class of 1972. I was invited. Of course, they had to invite me, I was the class vice-president. I remember running for that office either because I knew I could not win as president or because I did not want to be class president. I cannot remember the details. What I do remember was being painfully in love with a girl from far-off Kentucky who I had met in my hometown at the end of the summer before our last year of high school, and before the so-called experimental and recreational drugs to come that most of us would find ourselves partaking of. I say most of us loosely as many of these people are already dead and cannot defend themselves, and the others would certainly deny any indulgences in these types of behaviors given their positions in the small town government or their serious ties now to the Christian religion.
Reading this Adam Haberberg book by Yasmina Reza has made me remember, going back to that recent July of 2012 when I refused to participate with the others in reminiscing and celebrating our time attending high school together. The power of this book in striking up the need for a memory of my own is notable in itself, let alone the measure of Reza's great writing and relaxed style. The title character, Adam Haberberg, in his confusion over what the future may hold for him, was certainly, through a chance encounter with an old school chum, looking back through his past for the answers for how and where to go forward with his life and what remained of it. So in my own refusal to attend the reunion I still remembered and decided there were three ladies and one man I certainly did want to see again, but only to catch up with their lives and to find out if anything I believed about them was actually true. But the meeting of the four people never happened, just a few brief, electronic messages sent to my old friend Marcia.
Marcia was the only old classmate I had retained as a "friend" and a few times we messaged each other on the social site of Facebook. Marcia and I had a long history as kids competing with each other in the same small town, living at most five blocks from each other, walking home together almost every day from school, side by side, arguing over this and that, and muddling through all our early education at the same schools until finally graduating from high school in 1972. I remember taking her to a high school prom after she had recently broken up with her latest boyfriend who I had not liked since we had both become teenagers. I remember thinking back then, as much as I hated the prom, that I had nothing really better to do with my time than to attend this shitty event with my old pal Marcia and in my own way give her ex the finger.
It was the rare chance when ever saw Marcia again after high school. There was a period of a couple years after the end of my first marriage to the wrong woman that I did see Marcia again, probably ten years later just before that first class reunion, we getting drunk together in the local bar while planning as a hastily-made committee that ten-year class reunion, and flirting as usual about matters that would never be actualized. And then she found me again on Facebook thirty years later. I felt the relationship worthy of rekindling in the sense that she and the three others I was still interested in were the most important people in my life up until that endpoint of 1972. The other three people were Joni, Mary, and and a boy named Davy.
I played chess with Davy during lunch period all through middle school. I remember him being a big girl in a boy's body. I will most likely never know if he was gay, but I don't know how he could have been anything otherwise if today he is actually happy. I wanted to see him again and tell him that I always thought very highly of him, his intelligence, kindness, and knack for staying pretty much unpicked-on and unseen through high school even with him being one of the biggest kids in our class. Back in middle school he gave me a promotional picture of The Beatles that I may still have somewhere in one of my cardboard boxes I have packed away. His dad was a state congressman and his name was on the scholarship I never used that I will admit I proudly received for academic excellence. In high school I never knew anything about any of Davy's activities. I was not aware of what his interests were. And it was pretty much the same for me with my backdoor neighbor, Joni. She was a pretty tomboy who I had played with a bit as a little kid, but never having any other personal relationship through the years except for the occasional friendly greeting when passing each other in the halls of our schools we attended together for all of those thirteen years. Looking back now I know I also loved Joni in my own way. She meant something to me then and still means something to me now. I wanted to meet up again and tell her so. I am sorry it never happened and now it probably never will.
The last of the four people I wanted to see again was Mary. All through our schooling Mary and I were friends. We teased and flirted with each other like most kids do, and I always had my eye on her even knowing that I wasn't supposed to. In our house my dad called Mary's mother an old battle axe and I never really knew why. I suppose it had something to do with her mother's typically stern look and and boxy fireplug frame. She wasn't attractive and had plainly been out on the boat in the sun too long. She did not have a warm and inviting presence to her, and her husband and two sons were also aloof when it came to the perception of a young guy like me. Of course, I was younger than Mary's two brothers and certainly had nothing at all in common with them. There was no way I could imagine seeing either of them delivering the Detroit Free Press morning paper as I had done as a younger boy before school each day in the cold and rain and snow we had up there in northern Michigan. There were only a select few of us who could claim they delivered newspapers under the same horrible conditions we rode our bicycles in. Most of my fellow classmates would probably say privately that they considered Mary's whole family a little too privileged and likely a bit spoiled. But Mary was different because she was so quiet and unassuming. She was a leader of nothing. She wasn't a cheerleader, athlete, or even in the school band by my recollection. She just calmly showed up for class, did her homework, and stayed out of sight until she became too attractive to stay hidden for long. Of all the girls I had ever known throughout my twelve years of schooling Mary would have been the one I would have chosen for me. I would have been happy to have just become best friends with her, but back in those days boys and girls weren't like they sometimes are now.
For the duration of our childhood education together, from elementary through high school, Mary had pretty much avoided me. I attended, probably in elementary school, one of her birthday parties and I remember having a pretty good time in their very nice home. I don't remember the party at all, but I do remember it felt good to be invited. I was conflicted in my feelings for Mary because of the remarks my father had routinely made about her mother. He was as negative toward her mother as he was the whole family, and in addition to my dad's negative comments my mother also informed me that her own father was the one who had sold his oil company to those people out there on the water. My mom also added that her father at one time owned so much of our entire town that their own family should have had more to show for it, but my grandfather was such a poor businessman, she said, mostly because he was a sucker and friend to all and gave his money away. I do remember a classic old gas station downtown on a corner of Newman Street that my grandfather owned and I would often visit him there. It later became a bakery and then eventually was annexed into a sit-down eating section of what was once, and still may be called, Chum's Bar.
There may have been some bitterness and jealousy on my parents' part for what might have been had Grandpa done a better job with all his commercial holdings. My Kentucky wife and I still keep a summer cabin west of town about ten miles out in an inland lake community and my mother commented that at one time in their long family past her father also owned much of this area as well, but had sold it all off through the subsequent years. True or not, it is interesting to me how much of an influence my parents had on the one romantic relationship that could have completely changed my life if I had ever felt I had a fighting chance to win over Mary. In the meantime, I remained steadfast in my quest to just become good friends with her. We spent our senior year in high school sitting across from or next to each other in a Home and Family Living class. Our teacher was an attractive tall woman with very nice long legs. I can't remember her name but I will never forget those legs. In class we talked openly about sex, birth control, relationships, and other unlikely topics for that time. We spoke about current affairs because the Vietnam War was going on and many of us young men would be subjected to it and the upcoming draft. We all got to know each other better as the class did nothing less than further our relationships with others who we may not have spoken two words to for ten or more years prior to taking the class together.
The weekend before our high school graduation exercises, much of our senior class had decided to camp out in the Huron National Forest around the Silver Valley area. There were two decidedly different camps back in those days, the drinkers and the dopers. I was of the latter camp and probably too proud of it, as well as were some of the jocks I had remained friends with on my journey to "turn on and tune out". The rednecks were mostly drinkers, though some of them liked to partake in a little pot smoking from time to time and so we remained on friendly terms until one or more of them had too much to drink. We dopers set our tents up far away from the shot-gunning beers and flowing kegs. My cousin even drove his Chevy Vega up the hill to where our tents were and we had some pretty awesome stereo music coming from his external speakers he set up on the roof of his car. We campers would walk down our hill and visit with the drinking gang until it became uncool for us and even dangerous to be around them, and then we would escape back up to our tent compound on the hill above the predictably mounting fray. It was a great time we had in the woods that weekend and I don't remember any altercations that came as a result of our fears over the hard-drinking rednecks. But the last night I did get, what I have always considered, lucky. The girls who had previously been a little too frightened of us dopers discovered that we weren't so bad after all. That we actually did behave ourselves and bothered nobody. That we talked about things that seemed to matter. That we were tender and more loving in ways the heavy drinkers were not. That we were softer and non-aggressive but still managed to work hard gathering our wood for the fires, cooking food over the open flames, and performing the necessary housekeeping duties needed to keep a clean and comfortable campsite. I think, looking back now, that the girls may have been a little sentimental as well about the finality of our long history of school years spent so closely woven together.
After all the years of being nice to Mary she decided she would sleep next to me that last night in our tent. We fell asleep together in my sleeping bag, clothes on and covered, and I was happy for just that one night knowing that she cared enough for me to trust in me, to let me hold her and protect her, and we both slept well. In the morning we had our breakfast, broke camp, and made our way separately to graduation on time; smelly, happy, and for me a little dangerously smitten by her. But I don't think I ever saw Mary again after that day. It was as if I had accepted that she had innocently slept with me that one specific time in order to let me know she did care for me as best she could, and I never pursued a relationship with her beyond that warm and lovely incident. We had this history together between our families and our mutual schooling accomplished together in that town. But we never talked about any of these things ever throughout the duration of this history. Mary was an idea for me of what I was looking for in a long-term partner. The girl from Kentucky did become that idea manifest as my wife and constant partner for the last twenty-nine years and counting.
The book, Adam Haberberg, caused me to think more seriously about what I am doing today and what I have done throughout my past. It made me remember my sin of omission enough to want to correct it here on the page. But the need in me, the desire it would take, to face all four of these people again is most likely not in me. These words will have to do. But I can thank Yasmina Reza for leading me up to this point. My wife remarked that it is quite possible that my entire graduating class today would look like a gathering of right wing Republicans as hers did when she looked at their latest class picture taken this past summer as well. That would horrify and disgust me if you want to know the truth.
What I do enjoy most about the writing of Yasmina Reza is her dialogue. She reminds me very much of J.D. Salinger and the way she makes an adventure out of a day in the life of her character. She can write ably whether it is in a man's or a woman's voice. She knows her characters as if they were real and actually people she has known. There is never a misstep ever in Reza's voices or her choosing of them. The everyday affairs of her characters ring true and are interesting to me and I would assume to many others too if they were to hear more about this lady's talent. In a final note regarding this novel, Adam Haberberg, Reza is moving the basic story along in a nice and relaxed tempo, never moving ahead so fast and sure that her readers believe they are actually going to really get somewhere, but all along we know in our hearts that this time spent with her and her characters will damn well be worth it. The tension toward the end of this novel is extreme and handled realistically. This is a thoughtful book, well-written, and acknowledged by me as one of the very best novels composed within this period we now are living in.
A writer is a man trying to save himself from himself. A man who, in order to hold on to a little momentum toward the future, attempts to exchange his own existence for that of words.___Adam Haberberg, from the novel Adam Haberberg
For my ten-year class reunion back in 1982 I was irreverently drunk and rode to the head table, rumbling up through the main aisle in the meeting hall of a Catholic church we had rented, riding on the back of a large motorcycle driven by a fellow classmate, and Vietnam War veteran, Jim Anderson. I have not seen him again, nor the others, since. This summer of 2012, in my small hometown in Michigan, they held the 40th high school reunion of this same graduating class of 1972. I was invited. Of course, they had to invite me, I was the class vice-president. I remember running for that office either because I knew I could not win as president or because I did not want to be class president. I cannot remember the details. What I do remember was being painfully in love with a girl from far-off Kentucky who I had met in my hometown at the end of the summer before our last year of high school, and before the so-called experimental and recreational drugs to come that most of us would find ourselves partaking of. I say most of us loosely as many of these people are already dead and cannot defend themselves, and the others would certainly deny any indulgences in these types of behaviors given their positions in the small town government or their serious ties now to the Christian religion.
Reading this Adam Haberberg book by Yasmina Reza has made me remember, going back to that recent July of 2012 when I refused to participate with the others in reminiscing and celebrating our time attending high school together. The power of this book in striking up the need for a memory of my own is notable in itself, let alone the measure of Reza's great writing and relaxed style. The title character, Adam Haberberg, in his confusion over what the future may hold for him, was certainly, through a chance encounter with an old school chum, looking back through his past for the answers for how and where to go forward with his life and what remained of it. So in my own refusal to attend the reunion I still remembered and decided there were three ladies and one man I certainly did want to see again, but only to catch up with their lives and to find out if anything I believed about them was actually true. But the meeting of the four people never happened, just a few brief, electronic messages sent to my old friend Marcia.
Marcia was the only old classmate I had retained as a "friend" and a few times we messaged each other on the social site of Facebook. Marcia and I had a long history as kids competing with each other in the same small town, living at most five blocks from each other, walking home together almost every day from school, side by side, arguing over this and that, and muddling through all our early education at the same schools until finally graduating from high school in 1972. I remember taking her to a high school prom after she had recently broken up with her latest boyfriend who I had not liked since we had both become teenagers. I remember thinking back then, as much as I hated the prom, that I had nothing really better to do with my time than to attend this shitty event with my old pal Marcia and in my own way give her ex the finger.
It was the rare chance when ever saw Marcia again after high school. There was a period of a couple years after the end of my first marriage to the wrong woman that I did see Marcia again, probably ten years later just before that first class reunion, we getting drunk together in the local bar while planning as a hastily-made committee that ten-year class reunion, and flirting as usual about matters that would never be actualized. And then she found me again on Facebook thirty years later. I felt the relationship worthy of rekindling in the sense that she and the three others I was still interested in were the most important people in my life up until that endpoint of 1972. The other three people were Joni, Mary, and and a boy named Davy.
I played chess with Davy during lunch period all through middle school. I remember him being a big girl in a boy's body. I will most likely never know if he was gay, but I don't know how he could have been anything otherwise if today he is actually happy. I wanted to see him again and tell him that I always thought very highly of him, his intelligence, kindness, and knack for staying pretty much unpicked-on and unseen through high school even with him being one of the biggest kids in our class. Back in middle school he gave me a promotional picture of The Beatles that I may still have somewhere in one of my cardboard boxes I have packed away. His dad was a state congressman and his name was on the scholarship I never used that I will admit I proudly received for academic excellence. In high school I never knew anything about any of Davy's activities. I was not aware of what his interests were. And it was pretty much the same for me with my backdoor neighbor, Joni. She was a pretty tomboy who I had played with a bit as a little kid, but never having any other personal relationship through the years except for the occasional friendly greeting when passing each other in the halls of our schools we attended together for all of those thirteen years. Looking back now I know I also loved Joni in my own way. She meant something to me then and still means something to me now. I wanted to meet up again and tell her so. I am sorry it never happened and now it probably never will.
The last of the four people I wanted to see again was Mary. All through our schooling Mary and I were friends. We teased and flirted with each other like most kids do, and I always had my eye on her even knowing that I wasn't supposed to. In our house my dad called Mary's mother an old battle axe and I never really knew why. I suppose it had something to do with her mother's typically stern look and and boxy fireplug frame. She wasn't attractive and had plainly been out on the boat in the sun too long. She did not have a warm and inviting presence to her, and her husband and two sons were also aloof when it came to the perception of a young guy like me. Of course, I was younger than Mary's two brothers and certainly had nothing at all in common with them. There was no way I could imagine seeing either of them delivering the Detroit Free Press morning paper as I had done as a younger boy before school each day in the cold and rain and snow we had up there in northern Michigan. There were only a select few of us who could claim they delivered newspapers under the same horrible conditions we rode our bicycles in. Most of my fellow classmates would probably say privately that they considered Mary's whole family a little too privileged and likely a bit spoiled. But Mary was different because she was so quiet and unassuming. She was a leader of nothing. She wasn't a cheerleader, athlete, or even in the school band by my recollection. She just calmly showed up for class, did her homework, and stayed out of sight until she became too attractive to stay hidden for long. Of all the girls I had ever known throughout my twelve years of schooling Mary would have been the one I would have chosen for me. I would have been happy to have just become best friends with her, but back in those days boys and girls weren't like they sometimes are now.
For the duration of our childhood education together, from elementary through high school, Mary had pretty much avoided me. I attended, probably in elementary school, one of her birthday parties and I remember having a pretty good time in their very nice home. I don't remember the party at all, but I do remember it felt good to be invited. I was conflicted in my feelings for Mary because of the remarks my father had routinely made about her mother. He was as negative toward her mother as he was the whole family, and in addition to my dad's negative comments my mother also informed me that her own father was the one who had sold his oil company to those people out there on the water. My mom also added that her father at one time owned so much of our entire town that their own family should have had more to show for it, but my grandfather was such a poor businessman, she said, mostly because he was a sucker and friend to all and gave his money away. I do remember a classic old gas station downtown on a corner of Newman Street that my grandfather owned and I would often visit him there. It later became a bakery and then eventually was annexed into a sit-down eating section of what was once, and still may be called, Chum's Bar.
There may have been some bitterness and jealousy on my parents' part for what might have been had Grandpa done a better job with all his commercial holdings. My Kentucky wife and I still keep a summer cabin west of town about ten miles out in an inland lake community and my mother commented that at one time in their long family past her father also owned much of this area as well, but had sold it all off through the subsequent years. True or not, it is interesting to me how much of an influence my parents had on the one romantic relationship that could have completely changed my life if I had ever felt I had a fighting chance to win over Mary. In the meantime, I remained steadfast in my quest to just become good friends with her. We spent our senior year in high school sitting across from or next to each other in a Home and Family Living class. Our teacher was an attractive tall woman with very nice long legs. I can't remember her name but I will never forget those legs. In class we talked openly about sex, birth control, relationships, and other unlikely topics for that time. We spoke about current affairs because the Vietnam War was going on and many of us young men would be subjected to it and the upcoming draft. We all got to know each other better as the class did nothing less than further our relationships with others who we may not have spoken two words to for ten or more years prior to taking the class together.
The weekend before our high school graduation exercises, much of our senior class had decided to camp out in the Huron National Forest around the Silver Valley area. There were two decidedly different camps back in those days, the drinkers and the dopers. I was of the latter camp and probably too proud of it, as well as were some of the jocks I had remained friends with on my journey to "turn on and tune out". The rednecks were mostly drinkers, though some of them liked to partake in a little pot smoking from time to time and so we remained on friendly terms until one or more of them had too much to drink. We dopers set our tents up far away from the shot-gunning beers and flowing kegs. My cousin even drove his Chevy Vega up the hill to where our tents were and we had some pretty awesome stereo music coming from his external speakers he set up on the roof of his car. We campers would walk down our hill and visit with the drinking gang until it became uncool for us and even dangerous to be around them, and then we would escape back up to our tent compound on the hill above the predictably mounting fray. It was a great time we had in the woods that weekend and I don't remember any altercations that came as a result of our fears over the hard-drinking rednecks. But the last night I did get, what I have always considered, lucky. The girls who had previously been a little too frightened of us dopers discovered that we weren't so bad after all. That we actually did behave ourselves and bothered nobody. That we talked about things that seemed to matter. That we were tender and more loving in ways the heavy drinkers were not. That we were softer and non-aggressive but still managed to work hard gathering our wood for the fires, cooking food over the open flames, and performing the necessary housekeeping duties needed to keep a clean and comfortable campsite. I think, looking back now, that the girls may have been a little sentimental as well about the finality of our long history of school years spent so closely woven together.
After all the years of being nice to Mary she decided she would sleep next to me that last night in our tent. We fell asleep together in my sleeping bag, clothes on and covered, and I was happy for just that one night knowing that she cared enough for me to trust in me, to let me hold her and protect her, and we both slept well. In the morning we had our breakfast, broke camp, and made our way separately to graduation on time; smelly, happy, and for me a little dangerously smitten by her. But I don't think I ever saw Mary again after that day. It was as if I had accepted that she had innocently slept with me that one specific time in order to let me know she did care for me as best she could, and I never pursued a relationship with her beyond that warm and lovely incident. We had this history together between our families and our mutual schooling accomplished together in that town. But we never talked about any of these things ever throughout the duration of this history. Mary was an idea for me of what I was looking for in a long-term partner. The girl from Kentucky did become that idea manifest as my wife and constant partner for the last twenty-nine years and counting.
The book, Adam Haberberg, caused me to think more seriously about what I am doing today and what I have done throughout my past. It made me remember my sin of omission enough to want to correct it here on the page. But the need in me, the desire it would take, to face all four of these people again is most likely not in me. These words will have to do. But I can thank Yasmina Reza for leading me up to this point. My wife remarked that it is quite possible that my entire graduating class today would look like a gathering of right wing Republicans as hers did when she looked at their latest class picture taken this past summer as well. That would horrify and disgust me if you want to know the truth.
What I do enjoy most about the writing of Yasmina Reza is her dialogue. She reminds me very much of J.D. Salinger and the way she makes an adventure out of a day in the life of her character. She can write ably whether it is in a man's or a woman's voice. She knows her characters as if they were real and actually people she has known. There is never a misstep ever in Reza's voices or her choosing of them. The everyday affairs of her characters ring true and are interesting to me and I would assume to many others too if they were to hear more about this lady's talent. In a final note regarding this novel, Adam Haberberg, Reza is moving the basic story along in a nice and relaxed tempo, never moving ahead so fast and sure that her readers believe they are actually going to really get somewhere, but all along we know in our hearts that this time spent with her and her characters will damn well be worth it. The tension toward the end of this novel is extreme and handled realistically. This is a thoughtful book, well-written, and acknowledged by me as one of the very best novels composed within this period we now are living in.
April 27, 2015
Romanzo breve che racconta una giornata nella vita in crisi di Adam Haberberg (il cui nome è anche il titolo originale del libro). Scritta in terza persona, la vicenda è focalizzata esclusivamente sul protagonista. Ne seguiamo le azioni, ma soprattutto le palpitazioni del suo flusso di coscienza.
Adam soffre perché è uno scrittore fallito, perché la salute sta iniziando a tradirlo, perché il suo matrimonio gli è angoscioso. Il motivo ricorrente dei suoi pensieri è la visita oculistica appena fatta, che gli ha prospettato l’eventualità di un glaucoma. La vista di Adam si sta deteriorando, ma forse è la sua mente a consumarsi. Adam ha la sensazione di vedere male (gli appare “uno stivaletto” sovrimpresso alle immagini), ma potrebbe essere una suggestione. Forse quello che Adam fatica a vedere è la sua stessa realtà, la persona che è e che sarà. Eppure, nonostante le interferenze, al termine della giornata – e del romanzo – Adam pare aver trovato un barlume di chiarezza.
L’evento attorno al quale si sviluppa il romanzo è l’incontro casuale tra Adam e Marie-Thérèse Lyoc. Non si vedono da trent’anni, dai tempi del liceo. Marie-Thérèse è l’antitesi di Adam, che la trova irritante ma non riesce a fare a meno di restare con lei fino a sera, ipnotizzato dal gioco di specchi tra passato e presente. Marie-Thérèse è una single di mezz’età, fa la rappresentante di gadget e ignora che Adam sia diventato scrittore – a riprova del totale insuccesso della sua carriera, scandagliato lungo l’intero arco narrativo.
Adam è il malato, la persona depressa dal proprio stesso narcisismo, impossibilitata a vivere serenamente la vita quotidiana ma anche quella intellettuale. Marie-Thérèse rappresenta la parte “sana”, impermeabile alle difficoltà, forse stolidamente; dal punto di vista di Adam «un’ombra che attraversa il tempo con una robustezza nauseante». La semplicità a tratti banale con cui Marie-Thérèse vive si mostra ad Adam, annichilendolo. In Adam è il disprezzo a prendere il sopravvento, ma Marie-Thérèse sembra aver ormai svolto una funzione catalizzatrice che lo ha costretto a porsi domande talmente sincere da rivelare a se stesso la sua identità attuale.
Sull’incontro tra i due aleggiano insistenti i fantasmi della loro gioventù, in particolare quello di Alice Canella, compagna di scuola, amica di Marie-Thérèse e oggetto del desiderio di Adam, che ne scopre con trent’anni di ritardo la morte suicida. La voce di Alice lambisce il presente attraverso le sue lettere, che Marie-Thérèse mostra ad Adam in quello che potrebbe essere un goffo tentativo di seduzione. Ma non c’è possibile incontro tra loro, non c’è intersezione tra quelle realtà. A ciascuno la sua solitudine; e quella di Marie-Thérèse, così ordinaria e ordinata, silenziosa, suscita l’invidia di Adam, consapevolmente incapace di trarre alcun godimento dalla propria vita familiare.
Con questo romanzo breve o racconto lungo del 2003 Yasmina Reza esplora i temi che le sono cari: lo squallore nascosto delle vite borghesi, l’impossibilità di relazione tra individui, idee che saranno alla base di Il dio del massacro, e la boria intellettuale già esaminata in Arte. Il risultato è puntuale, forse al punto della prevedibilità, e apre la strada al respiro più ampio del suo ultimo romanzo Felici i felici.
Adam soffre perché è uno scrittore fallito, perché la salute sta iniziando a tradirlo, perché il suo matrimonio gli è angoscioso. Il motivo ricorrente dei suoi pensieri è la visita oculistica appena fatta, che gli ha prospettato l’eventualità di un glaucoma. La vista di Adam si sta deteriorando, ma forse è la sua mente a consumarsi. Adam ha la sensazione di vedere male (gli appare “uno stivaletto” sovrimpresso alle immagini), ma potrebbe essere una suggestione. Forse quello che Adam fatica a vedere è la sua stessa realtà, la persona che è e che sarà. Eppure, nonostante le interferenze, al termine della giornata – e del romanzo – Adam pare aver trovato un barlume di chiarezza.
L’evento attorno al quale si sviluppa il romanzo è l’incontro casuale tra Adam e Marie-Thérèse Lyoc. Non si vedono da trent’anni, dai tempi del liceo. Marie-Thérèse è l’antitesi di Adam, che la trova irritante ma non riesce a fare a meno di restare con lei fino a sera, ipnotizzato dal gioco di specchi tra passato e presente. Marie-Thérèse è una single di mezz’età, fa la rappresentante di gadget e ignora che Adam sia diventato scrittore – a riprova del totale insuccesso della sua carriera, scandagliato lungo l’intero arco narrativo.
Adam è il malato, la persona depressa dal proprio stesso narcisismo, impossibilitata a vivere serenamente la vita quotidiana ma anche quella intellettuale. Marie-Thérèse rappresenta la parte “sana”, impermeabile alle difficoltà, forse stolidamente; dal punto di vista di Adam «un’ombra che attraversa il tempo con una robustezza nauseante». La semplicità a tratti banale con cui Marie-Thérèse vive si mostra ad Adam, annichilendolo. In Adam è il disprezzo a prendere il sopravvento, ma Marie-Thérèse sembra aver ormai svolto una funzione catalizzatrice che lo ha costretto a porsi domande talmente sincere da rivelare a se stesso la sua identità attuale.
Sull’incontro tra i due aleggiano insistenti i fantasmi della loro gioventù, in particolare quello di Alice Canella, compagna di scuola, amica di Marie-Thérèse e oggetto del desiderio di Adam, che ne scopre con trent’anni di ritardo la morte suicida. La voce di Alice lambisce il presente attraverso le sue lettere, che Marie-Thérèse mostra ad Adam in quello che potrebbe essere un goffo tentativo di seduzione. Ma non c’è possibile incontro tra loro, non c’è intersezione tra quelle realtà. A ciascuno la sua solitudine; e quella di Marie-Thérèse, così ordinaria e ordinata, silenziosa, suscita l’invidia di Adam, consapevolmente incapace di trarre alcun godimento dalla propria vita familiare.
Con questo romanzo breve o racconto lungo del 2003 Yasmina Reza esplora i temi che le sono cari: lo squallore nascosto delle vite borghesi, l’impossibilità di relazione tra individui, idee che saranno alla base di Il dio del massacro, e la boria intellettuale già esaminata in Arte. Il risultato è puntuale, forse al punto della prevedibilità, e apre la strada al respiro più ampio del suo ultimo romanzo Felici i felici.
September 15, 2019
Adam si copre l'occhio con il palmo. Bisognerà spiegare all'oculista l'avvenimento di questa sera, pensa, Bisognerà trovare la parola esatta, bisognerà orientarlo con accuratezza verso una nuova valutazione della situazione. Bisognerà trovare la parola esatta e poi, potendo solo sceglierne una di scarsa precisione, poiché il prontuario delle parole è grossolano, bisognerà sfumarla con un aggettivo poiché è fondamentale, ritiene Adam, fondamentale non spaventare l'oculista.
Ho sentito, dottore, in maniera improvvisa, un disordine ...no...un dolore...no, non è un dolore...una dislocazione, sì una certa dislocazione, come se i miei capillari, dottore, si separassero dall'arteria e andassero a sparpagliarsi senza meta in punti aberranti. Sarebbe il famoso travaso di cui mi ha parlato e il cui nome mi ossessiona? La mia visione ne è stata colpita, il che è buon segno, non è vero dottore? come se il mio occhio non volesse saperne nulla di ciò che si trama dietro di lui, come se il mio occhio avesse preso una sorta di contropiede metafisico, si fosse innalzato al di sopra degli organi dicendo tu vedrai fino alla fine, anche se non sei più vascolarizzato, anche se nulla più ti lega alle radici della vita tu vedrai, finché non ti cadrà la palpebra il mondo sarà nitido. Mi piacerebbe, noti dottore, che fosse così anche per tutto me stesso. Poiché questa sensazione di dislocazione la provo anche nella mia esistenza, come se gli elementi che la componevano un tempo non fossero più collegati fra di loro, né a un ego unico, come se uno dei miei frammenti potesse andare alla deriva ogni momento e dovunque verso le lontane periferie in cui sono perso. Crede, dottore, che il mondo possa restare nitido quando si va verso l'avvenire senza alcuna prospettiva di gioia poiché non si è più abbastanza interi per coglierla?
Irène non sopporta i miei lamenti. E' lei che dice i miei lamenti. Come se mi lamentassi di continuo, il che è falso, o forse è diventato vero per il fatto che non avendo mai provato il conforto di sentire in lei una forma d'indulgenza, ho finito con l'accentuare i miei lamenti, addirittura col teatralizzarli, nell'intento paradossale di essere preso sul serio, di creare nell'altro un cedimento compassionevole. E' vero che con mia moglie Irène esagero l'espressione della mia sofferenza, e ciò in generale, l'ho sempre fatto, quali che siano i miei mali, ma l'ho fatto per attirarla a me ed è stato un grande errore, Marie-Thérèse, poiché la sofferenza non si comunica, non più del senso di abbandono, che viene chiamato anche solitudine ma che è peggio, non più del dispiacere, del resto mi chiedo proprio che cosa si comunichi.
Ho sentito, dottore, in maniera improvvisa, un disordine ...no...un dolore...no, non è un dolore...una dislocazione, sì una certa dislocazione, come se i miei capillari, dottore, si separassero dall'arteria e andassero a sparpagliarsi senza meta in punti aberranti. Sarebbe il famoso travaso di cui mi ha parlato e il cui nome mi ossessiona? La mia visione ne è stata colpita, il che è buon segno, non è vero dottore? come se il mio occhio non volesse saperne nulla di ciò che si trama dietro di lui, come se il mio occhio avesse preso una sorta di contropiede metafisico, si fosse innalzato al di sopra degli organi dicendo tu vedrai fino alla fine, anche se non sei più vascolarizzato, anche se nulla più ti lega alle radici della vita tu vedrai, finché non ti cadrà la palpebra il mondo sarà nitido. Mi piacerebbe, noti dottore, che fosse così anche per tutto me stesso. Poiché questa sensazione di dislocazione la provo anche nella mia esistenza, come se gli elementi che la componevano un tempo non fossero più collegati fra di loro, né a un ego unico, come se uno dei miei frammenti potesse andare alla deriva ogni momento e dovunque verso le lontane periferie in cui sono perso. Crede, dottore, che il mondo possa restare nitido quando si va verso l'avvenire senza alcuna prospettiva di gioia poiché non si è più abbastanza interi per coglierla?
Irène non sopporta i miei lamenti. E' lei che dice i miei lamenti. Come se mi lamentassi di continuo, il che è falso, o forse è diventato vero per il fatto che non avendo mai provato il conforto di sentire in lei una forma d'indulgenza, ho finito con l'accentuare i miei lamenti, addirittura col teatralizzarli, nell'intento paradossale di essere preso sul serio, di creare nell'altro un cedimento compassionevole. E' vero che con mia moglie Irène esagero l'espressione della mia sofferenza, e ciò in generale, l'ho sempre fatto, quali che siano i miei mali, ma l'ho fatto per attirarla a me ed è stato un grande errore, Marie-Thérèse, poiché la sofferenza non si comunica, non più del senso di abbandono, che viene chiamato anche solitudine ma che è peggio, non più del dispiacere, del resto mi chiedo proprio che cosa si comunichi.
January 25, 2024
Me ha parecido muy divertido el hecho de que Yasmina sea ultra capaz de hacerte sentir, si no sabes que ella es la autora, que estás leyendo al típico autor macho/misógino e incomprendido, donde todo gira alrededor de su falo y de su victimismo.
Adam Haberberg es tedioso, aburrido e inútil, Yasmina reza es una capa.
Adam Haberberg es tedioso, aburrido e inútil, Yasmina reza es una capa.
August 11, 2019
Adam si copre l'occhio con il palmo. Bisognerà spiegare all'oculista l'avvenimento di questa sera, pensa, Bisognerà trovare la parola esatta, bisognerà orientarlo con accuratezza verso una nuova valutazione della situazione. Bisognerà trovare la parola esatta e poi, potendo solo sceglierne una di scarsa precisione, poiché il prontuario delle parole è grossolano, bisognerà sfumarla con un aggettivo poiché è fondamentale, ritiene Adam, fondamentale non spaventare l'oculista.
Ho sentito, dottore, in maniera improvvisa, un disordine ...no...un dolore...no, non è un dolore...una dislocazione, sì una certa dislocazione, come se i miei capillari, dottore, si separassero dall'arteria e andassero a sparpagliarsi senza meta in punti aberranti. Sarebbe il famoso travaso di cui mi ha parlato e il cui nome mi ossessiona? La mia visione ne è stata colpita, il che è buon segno, non è vero dottore? come se il mio occhio non volesse saperne nulla di ciò che si trama dietro di lui, come se il mio occhio avesse preso una sorta di contropiede metafisico, si fosse innalzato al di sopra degli organi dicendo tu vedrai fino alla fine, anche se non sei più vascolarizzato, anche se nulla più ti lega alle radici della vita tu vedrai, finché non ti cadrà la palpebra il mondo sarà nitido. Mi piacerebbe, noti dottore, che fosse così anche per tutto me stesso. Poiché questa sensazione di dislocazione la provo anche nella mia esistenza, come se gli elementi che la componevano un tempo non fossero più collegati fra di loro, né a un ego unico, come se uno dei miei frammenti potesse andare alla deriva ogni momento e dovunque verso le lontane periferie in cui sono perso. Crede, dottore, che il mondo possa restare nitido quando si va verso l'avvenire senza alcuna prospettiva di gioia poiché non si è più abbastanza interi per coglierla?
Irène non sopporta i miei lamenti. E' lei che dice i miei lamenti. Come se mi lamentassi di continuo, il che è falso, o forse è diventato vero per il fatto che non avendo mai provato il conforto di sentire in lei una forma d'indulgenza, ho finito con l'accentuare i miei lamenti, addirittura col teatralizzarli, nell'intento paradossale di essere preso sul serio, di creare nell'altro un cedimento compassionevole, E' vero che con mia moglie Irène esagero l'espressione della mia sofferenza, e ciò in generale, l'ho sempre fatto, quali che siano i miei mali, ma l'ho fatto per attirarla a me ed è stato un grande errore, Marie-Thérèse, poiché la sofferenza non si comunica, non più del senso di abbandono, che viene chiamato anche solitudine ma che è peggio, non più del dispiacere, del resto mi chiedo proprio che cosa si comunichi.
Ho sentito, dottore, in maniera improvvisa, un disordine ...no...un dolore...no, non è un dolore...una dislocazione, sì una certa dislocazione, come se i miei capillari, dottore, si separassero dall'arteria e andassero a sparpagliarsi senza meta in punti aberranti. Sarebbe il famoso travaso di cui mi ha parlato e il cui nome mi ossessiona? La mia visione ne è stata colpita, il che è buon segno, non è vero dottore? come se il mio occhio non volesse saperne nulla di ciò che si trama dietro di lui, come se il mio occhio avesse preso una sorta di contropiede metafisico, si fosse innalzato al di sopra degli organi dicendo tu vedrai fino alla fine, anche se non sei più vascolarizzato, anche se nulla più ti lega alle radici della vita tu vedrai, finché non ti cadrà la palpebra il mondo sarà nitido. Mi piacerebbe, noti dottore, che fosse così anche per tutto me stesso. Poiché questa sensazione di dislocazione la provo anche nella mia esistenza, come se gli elementi che la componevano un tempo non fossero più collegati fra di loro, né a un ego unico, come se uno dei miei frammenti potesse andare alla deriva ogni momento e dovunque verso le lontane periferie in cui sono perso. Crede, dottore, che il mondo possa restare nitido quando si va verso l'avvenire senza alcuna prospettiva di gioia poiché non si è più abbastanza interi per coglierla?
Irène non sopporta i miei lamenti. E' lei che dice i miei lamenti. Come se mi lamentassi di continuo, il che è falso, o forse è diventato vero per il fatto che non avendo mai provato il conforto di sentire in lei una forma d'indulgenza, ho finito con l'accentuare i miei lamenti, addirittura col teatralizzarli, nell'intento paradossale di essere preso sul serio, di creare nell'altro un cedimento compassionevole, E' vero che con mia moglie Irène esagero l'espressione della mia sofferenza, e ciò in generale, l'ho sempre fatto, quali che siano i miei mali, ma l'ho fatto per attirarla a me ed è stato un grande errore, Marie-Thérèse, poiché la sofferenza non si comunica, non più del senso di abbandono, che viene chiamato anche solitudine ma che è peggio, non più del dispiacere, del resto mi chiedo proprio che cosa si comunichi.
March 31, 2025
Mi duole dirlo ma è la prima volta che non sono riuscita ad entrare in contatto con un libro scritto da Yasmina Reza.
Il flusso di coscienza mi ha completamente travolta e non in senso positivo, non ci ho praticamente capito nulla se non verso la fine (che ho anche apprezzato).
La scrittura è sempre bella ma su questo non avevo dubbi. Yasmina ti amo e ti amerò lo stesso ma devo essere anche oggettiva a volte.
Mannaggia.
Il flusso di coscienza mi ha completamente travolta e non in senso positivo, non ci ho praticamente capito nulla se non verso la fine (che ho anche apprezzato).
La scrittura è sempre bella ma su questo non avevo dubbi. Yasmina ti amo e ti amerò lo stesso ma devo essere anche oggettiva a volte.
Mannaggia.
March 6, 2021
Misch Virginia Woolfs "Stream of conciousness" mit Bukowskis Männern in der Mid-Life Crisis und das Buch kommt dabei heraus.
Kurzweilig und trotzdem dicht bepackt.
Kurzweilig und trotzdem dicht bepackt.
March 13, 2024
Meh, unha francesada
August 12, 2019
روزی از روزها آدام هابربرگ نویسنده، روی نیمکتی در باغوحش روبروی قفس شترمرغها نشسته بود و با خودش فکر میکرد: دیگر تمام شد! انگار در خانه سالمندان نشستهام.
با خودش فکر کرد، این وضعیت چنان خودبخود پیش آمده که گویی برای رسیدن به آن تلاشی لازم نبوده است. روزی دلانگیز، آدم در فضایی باز نشسته باشد، به آخر خط هم رسیده باشد
با خودش فکر کرد، این وضعیت چنان خودبخود پیش آمده که گویی برای رسیدن به آن تلاشی لازم نبوده است. روزی دلانگیز، آدم در فضایی باز نشسته باشد، به آخر خط هم رسیده باشد
February 6, 2021
V objektivu Yasminy Rezy se objevují stárnoucí muži. Konkrétně jejich autentický vnitřní svět.
Opět zajímavá postavička – vyhořelý spisovatel, kterého už dávno netěší manželka ani děti, do toho se mu ještě dostává zdravotních problémů s očima. A tak pozoruje ve zvěřinci pštrosi, to je takový milý. Pak potká na svoji bývalou spolužačku a začnou se, spíš teda v jeho hlavě, dít věci.
Celé je to velmi živé. S myšlenkami a vzpomínkami, které občas dosahují volného charakteru, se prolíná aktuální dění a dialogy. Dialogy velmi nucené, nicméně naprosto výborně konstruované (dramatická zkušenost Rezy je zřejmá). Takové ty strohé strojené konverzace zakončené frázemi jako "Jo, jasně.", "Nojo." Suchopárný, ale tak skutečný.
Až v přítomnosti bývalé spolužačky Marie-Thérèse si Adam začne uvědomovat nedostatky svého života a začnou se mu jevit iracionální úzkosti. Výborně zobrazená frustrující osamělost, když se člověk nemá o koho opřít, ale zároveň jeho postoj vůči okolí zůstává kritický. Ale občas je i ten cynismus poměrně vtipného rázu, že z toho zas taková depka není.
Moc se toho neděje, ale mluví se požehnaně. A taky výborně.
Albert má Martinu, která mu masíruje nohy a připravuje mu telecí brzlík, já mám Irenu, která mě nenávidí. Chceš snad ženu, která by ti masírovala nohy a dělala telecí brzlík? uvažuje a prohlíží si agresivně červenou cihlovou zeď pavilonu šelem.
(s. 15)
Opět zajímavá postavička – vyhořelý spisovatel, kterého už dávno netěší manželka ani děti, do toho se mu ještě dostává zdravotních problémů s očima. A tak pozoruje ve zvěřinci pštrosi, to je takový milý. Pak potká na svoji bývalou spolužačku a začnou se, spíš teda v jeho hlavě, dít věci.
Celé je to velmi živé. S myšlenkami a vzpomínkami, které občas dosahují volného charakteru, se prolíná aktuální dění a dialogy. Dialogy velmi nucené, nicméně naprosto výborně konstruované (dramatická zkušenost Rezy je zřejmá). Takové ty strohé strojené konverzace zakončené frázemi jako "Jo, jasně.", "Nojo." Suchopárný, ale tak skutečný.
Až v přítomnosti bývalé spolužačky Marie-Thérèse si Adam začne uvědomovat nedostatky svého života a začnou se mu jevit iracionální úzkosti. Výborně zobrazená frustrující osamělost, když se člověk nemá o koho opřít, ale zároveň jeho postoj vůči okolí zůstává kritický. Ale občas je i ten cynismus poměrně vtipného rázu, že z toho zas taková depka není.
Moc se toho neděje, ale mluví se požehnaně. A taky výborně.
Albert má Martinu, která mu masíruje nohy a připravuje mu telecí brzlík, já mám Irenu, která mě nenávidí. Chceš snad ženu, která by ti masírovala nohy a dělala telecí brzlík? uvažuje a prohlíží si agresivně červenou cihlovou zeď pavilonu šelem.
(s. 15)
November 25, 2024
Un texte profond où prennent corps la perte de la vue en même temps que la perte de la vie. La déchéance inéluctable y est intimement peinte dans un monologue intérieur constant.
Dérangeant et vrai.
Un texte à ne pas mettre entre toutes les mains.
Dérangeant et vrai.
Un texte à ne pas mettre entre toutes les mains.
March 13, 2023
Genio. Voglio leggere altro di suo, subito
July 9, 2008
This is an astonishing novel. There is almost no plot - a man meets a tangential friend from childhood and goes out to her apartment in the suburbs of Paris for the afternoon - and yet every page is dazzling and riveting. Almost nothing of "import" happens (their conversations are relatively banal and baggy), but everything that happens, every detail, is made palpable and real through the intensity of its specificity. It is perhaps one of truest novels I've ever read and I have no idea how she accomplished this. A beautiful book.
September 7, 2012
The main character's meandering thought processes is exactly my thing...maybe not for everybody. There's something so absurdly realistic about her characters--even the minor ones. I absolutely adore Yasmina Reza, have I mentioned this?
February 2, 2025
no sé qué lleva a un avestruz a esconder la cabeza bajo tierra en lugar de actuar de otra manera ni sé por qué motivo Adam termina sentado un día cualquiera frente a una pareja de avestruces que lo miran curiosos como si esperasen que de un momento a otro fuese èl quién enterrase su cabeza en la tierra.. . lo que no saben los avestruces es que Adam ya está enterrado. no es que esté muerto ,que no lo está, es que simplemente ha recibido una noticia, una muy mala noticia, una terrible noticia que no esperaba porque si había superado con éxito una colonoscopia nada malo podría sucederle ... pero hay epifanias que no lo son y lo que no ocurre en el colon de Adam sube hasta su vista y ahí justo en el ojo izquierdo de Adam se produce el boom... una especie de glaucoma ,un glaucoma extraño le está haciendo perder la vista a un ritmo vertiginoso. Él que escribe , es escritor, aunque haya quedado reducido a escribir novelas de aeropuerto, siente que todo se oscurece a su alrededor , porque no solo es la vista lo que va mal en su vida, es que todo va mal en su vida. y el glaucoma es lo que le ha llevado a sentarse a observar a esa pareja de avestruces mientras deja que la maraña de pensamientos de su cabeza no le dejen atisbar a la mujer que se le acerca. su ojo izquierdo, o sus problemas con Irene o los libros sin sentido que debe escribir al año le impiden darse cuenta que una antigua compañera de colegio se acerca a el y sin saber cómo termina montado en su coche rumbo a su casa a comer una tortilla de patatas mientras a su vez lucha con todas fuerzas por contener el avance de su glaucoma como si eso y todo lo demás fuese capaz de detenerse solo por desearlo ....
#yasminareza crea un enorme monólogo interior titulado #adamharberberg para ofrecer al lector una tragicómica fábula sobre como nos enfrentamos a los problemas y a los miedos y como la mayor parte de las veces nos asemejamos a cientos y cientos de avestruces. por eso solo cuando Adam descubre la gravedad de lo que se cierne sobre él piensa en la posibilidad de sacar la cabeza de donde sea que la tenga e intentar resolver lo que aún se pueda arreglar. Y quizás ese encuentro fortuito con Marie Therese su compañera de colegio le haga poner el turbo o también que ya no ve casi con el ojo izquierdo .... quizás la pérdida de un sentido conlleva que Adam agudice los que le restan y aún esté a tiempo de hacer lo que sea que tenga que hacer .
#yasminareza crea un enorme monólogo interior titulado #adamharberberg para ofrecer al lector una tragicómica fábula sobre como nos enfrentamos a los problemas y a los miedos y como la mayor parte de las veces nos asemejamos a cientos y cientos de avestruces. por eso solo cuando Adam descubre la gravedad de lo que se cierne sobre él piensa en la posibilidad de sacar la cabeza de donde sea que la tenga e intentar resolver lo que aún se pueda arreglar. Y quizás ese encuentro fortuito con Marie Therese su compañera de colegio le haga poner el turbo o también que ya no ve casi con el ojo izquierdo .... quizás la pérdida de un sentido conlleva que Adam agudice los que le restan y aún esté a tiempo de hacer lo que sea que tenga que hacer .
April 29, 2023
Adam Haberberg is forty-five-year-old writer and has been diagnosed with both thrombosis and a glaucoma. He wouldn't mind that his body is degenerating if it were not for the fact that his career is also floundering. In his view, a writer "attempts to exchange his own existence for that of words" but, as he reflects, his second book was a flop and he feels his third book is a disappointment. His whole existential purpose is imperiled. His marriage is a loveless contract and he ruefully ponders his life misfortune watching ostriches at the zoo. He resents a rival writer, Goncharki, who constantly tries to be a popular crowd-pleaser, writing potboiler cliches for mass-consumption (Adam could write, and does write, such things pseudonymously, but he rues these betrayals of his art). By coincidence, he runs into an old high-school peer, Marie-Thérèse, a real-estate manager who spouts business platitudes about being pleasant and authentic. It drives him insane.
It's a thrilling novel about petty resentments and artistic hubris. Adam is cavalier and haughty; he groups Marie-Thérèse with the hoi polloi and resents all her vulgar simplicities; yet, even while he smugly looks down on her, he can't at the end of the day claim to have made a better existence for himself. His whole life dedicated to literary dignity is an equally vain and hollow project. As in Art and her novel Desolation, Yasmina Reza is a poet of regrets and grievances. Minor contretemps expose deeper existential conflicts. Her dialogue cuts deep with bitter arguments hinging on trivial disputes.
It's a thrilling novel about petty resentments and artistic hubris. Adam is cavalier and haughty; he groups Marie-Thérèse with the hoi polloi and resents all her vulgar simplicities; yet, even while he smugly looks down on her, he can't at the end of the day claim to have made a better existence for himself. His whole life dedicated to literary dignity is an equally vain and hollow project. As in Art and her novel Desolation, Yasmina Reza is a poet of regrets and grievances. Minor contretemps expose deeper existential conflicts. Her dialogue cuts deep with bitter arguments hinging on trivial disputes.
May 24, 2021
Ich hätte all die Querverweise, die Charakterentwicklung, die extensiven Metaphern wirklich wertschätzen können, wäre da nicht die holpernde, verschlungene Sprache, die Reza in diesem Büchlein auspackt. Sprachlich zu viel versucht und nicht gelungen - ich habe mich von all den fehlenden Punkten regelrecht durchgepeitscht gefühlt. Alleiniges Highlight: die wirklich wunderbar pointierten Dialoge. Lohnen sich die 150 Seitchen dafür? Nein.
May 28, 2021
Mi sento molto fortunato ad avere una copia di questo romanzo quasi dimenticato, sepolto dalle opere più recenti e riconosciute di Reza. Ma questo libro - sulla traduzione del titolo stendiamo un velo pietoso - non ha niente da invidiare a Felici i felici e agli altri. Chi ama Reza ci ritrova tutta la carica tragicomica, la convivenza di tenerezza e struggimento, che caratterizzano i suoi personaggi e i suoi libri. Da recuperare!
January 11, 2019
A writer undergoing a midlife crisis encounters an old classmate who takes him home, fanning the flames of his anxiety. Very existential, very French, very entertaining.
July 12, 2025
حالا که رخدادهای گذشته به شایعهای بیاساس میماند، پس سرنوشتی مشابه در انتظار وقایع حال است.
October 4, 2025
saugt die lebenslust aus einem heraus
aber yasmina reza ist mein liebster blutegel
aber yasmina reza ist mein liebster blutegel
March 31, 2026
3,5 ⭐️
August 31, 2014
Why Adam Haberberg? That was the first thing I asked myself when I picked up this book. There’ve been other book with names for titles—Anna Karenin , Moll Flanders, Mrs. Dalloway—but I’ve always thought these were missed opportunities, labels rather than titles. So, why Adam Haberberg? My guess is because this is a book about identity. There are several Adam Haberbergs in this book—the husband, the father, the failed literary novelist, the semi-successful pulp writer, the once upon a time schoolboy—and then there’s the face in the mirror, a face that due to the diagnosis of a thrombosis in the central vein of the retina is not as clear as it once was. It’s an obvious metaphor but an effective one. He’s forty-seven—not too young to have a midlife crisis—and his health and failing career is not the only thing to worry over; his marriage is also on the rocks.
In an interview in The Guardian in 2001(so a couple of years before this book was first published) Reza said, “I knew as a young child that everyone would die, that humanity was vile. I had no optimism in human beings. I have no faith in humanity. Our first instincts are vile.” Adam’s not vile nor do I get the feeling he thinks mankind is especially vile but his mortality certainly troubles him and he’s really not optimistic about his future. Talking about himself in the third person he notes:
The blurb says the book is “bitingly funny”. Chloëe Schama for The New York Sun says it’s “just not funny”. Who to believe, eh? The bottom line is that it is funny at times but it’s a certain kind of funny, an uncomfortable kind of funny; there’re no belly laughs to be had. Much of what fun there is comes from Adam poking fun at himself and the state his life gotten itself into. Probably the last thing he needed to see on this particular day was someone who remembers clearly—and reminds him of—the person he used to be before everything went pear-shaped. Which is exactly why the author has Marie-Thérèse appear and be the kind of person she is. She’s not really the antagonist though. Adam’s his own antagonist, the Adam inside his head in whose company we spend the greater part of this book. That Marie-Thérèse turns out to have apparently unresolved feelings for him comes as no big surprise. And that could’ve played out in a few different ways but expecting her to be his salvation is probably too much to ask for.
Back in 2007 G’s entire three-star review of this book consisted of the sentence, “Oh Yasmina...Beckett you're not.” I think probably what he’s getting at is what Michiko Kakutani said in her The New York Times review where she writes, “Adam’s long rant has little in common with Krapp’s or Lear’s existential rage at the world and everything in common with the late-night bloviating of an angry blogger, eager to whine and vent—full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing.” To be fair both Krapp and Lear are much older than Adam and what we have presented to us in this little book is a midlife crisis, not an end of life crisis. Also who’s to say that small and rather pathetic men can’t have crises too? Or angry bloggers come to that?
I liked the book well enough apart from the punctuation. I’m old-fashioned in this regard. I like to know where someone’s talking and when someone’s thinking and I don’t know why some authors make their readers’ lives so hard. The thing is Reza does use quotes but not consistently. Use them or don’t use them but be clear.
In an interview in The Guardian in 2001(so a couple of years before this book was first published) Reza said, “I knew as a young child that everyone would die, that humanity was vile. I had no optimism in human beings. I have no faith in humanity. Our first instincts are vile.” Adam’s not vile nor do I get the feeling he thinks mankind is especially vile but his mortality certainly troubles him and he’s really not optimistic about his future. Talking about himself in the third person he notes:
He's an ordinary man who dreads failing health and being blind. Who dreads having to renounce what he's never had.We encounter him at the the Jardin des Plantes menagerie in Paris looking at the ostriches and feeling sorry for himself. There he runs into a girl he once knew at school, now, of course, a forty-seven-year-old woman: Marie-Thérèse Lyoc. She persuades him to return home with her for a bite to eat and the rest of the book is divided between the car journey there and their evening together. Not a lot happens. The conversation is strained for the most part and Adam regrets having let her talk him into going with her. All the while he’s with her he continues to have the same kinds of thoughts and internal conversations he was having whilst on his own often drifting off and not too sure what Marie-Thérèse’s been saying in the interim.
The blurb says the book is “bitingly funny”. Chloëe Schama for The New York Sun says it’s “just not funny”. Who to believe, eh? The bottom line is that it is funny at times but it’s a certain kind of funny, an uncomfortable kind of funny; there’re no belly laughs to be had. Much of what fun there is comes from Adam poking fun at himself and the state his life gotten itself into. Probably the last thing he needed to see on this particular day was someone who remembers clearly—and reminds him of—the person he used to be before everything went pear-shaped. Which is exactly why the author has Marie-Thérèse appear and be the kind of person she is. She’s not really the antagonist though. Adam’s his own antagonist, the Adam inside his head in whose company we spend the greater part of this book. That Marie-Thérèse turns out to have apparently unresolved feelings for him comes as no big surprise. And that could’ve played out in a few different ways but expecting her to be his salvation is probably too much to ask for.
Back in 2007 G’s entire three-star review of this book consisted of the sentence, “Oh Yasmina...Beckett you're not.” I think probably what he’s getting at is what Michiko Kakutani said in her The New York Times review where she writes, “Adam’s long rant has little in common with Krapp’s or Lear’s existential rage at the world and everything in common with the late-night bloviating of an angry blogger, eager to whine and vent—full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing.” To be fair both Krapp and Lear are much older than Adam and what we have presented to us in this little book is a midlife crisis, not an end of life crisis. Also who’s to say that small and rather pathetic men can’t have crises too? Or angry bloggers come to that?
I liked the book well enough apart from the punctuation. I’m old-fashioned in this regard. I like to know where someone’s talking and when someone’s thinking and I don’t know why some authors make their readers’ lives so hard. The thing is Reza does use quotes but not consistently. Use them or don’t use them but be clear.
November 4, 2023
Un libro top para entender al "escritor macho" refunfuñón y misógino. Lo publicó Yasmina Reza hace 20 años y ahora ve la luz en español.
Me estreno como crítica en Babelia comentándolo junto a su más reciente novelita: https://elpais.com/babelia/2023-11-04...
Me estreno como crítica en Babelia comentándolo junto a su más reciente novelita: https://elpais.com/babelia/2023-11-04...
December 31, 2024
Yasmina Reza, la reconocida autora teatral de "Arte" tan representada (la de Josep María Flotats me entusiasmó en su época) o de "Un dios salvaje", una gran obra llevada posteriormente al cine por Roman Polanski, es además una gran narradora de la que soy un fiel seguidor.
Comprobé hace unos años al leer “Heureux les Heureux” que Yasmina Reza se maneja muy bien, con soltura y mezcla de sutileza y sentido del humor, escribiendo relatos. Luego "Babylone", una obra con diálogos mordaces y sarcásticos, que se convierte en una novela a medio camino entre la novela negra y la farsa o “Serge”, un texto magnifico, lleno de ternura, humor y profundidad.
Adam Haberberg es un hombre de cuarenta y siete años en plena crisis existencial (la llamada crisis masculina -que no machista- de los cuarenta).
Nos lo encontramos, sentado en el jardin animalier del Jardin des Plantes contemplando una pareja de avestruces y ensimismado en la amargura de sus nubarrones, en la frustración de su vida. Se mezclan en su cabeza su fracaso como escritor, su hipocondría, su consulta médica, el fiasco de su vida conyugal con Irène, la decepción del fin de semana en armonía familiar en el Cotentin.
Cuando de pronto se acerca hacia él una antigua compañera de lycée, Marie-Thérèse Lyoc, sin interés para él en aquella época, con la que no había tenido apenas contacto ni cuando eran compañeros ni en los treinta años posteriores. Ahora una mujer igual de anodina. Al final termina acompañándola a su casa sin un verdadero interés. La transparencia de ella, su interés por su época de estudios, sus compañeros olvidados y sus vidas actuales contrasta con el sentimiento de superioridad de él, su sufrimiento interior, con su sarcasmo ante esa mujer simple pero sincera a la que no cuenta sus fracasos, miente y pretende ser quien no es.
Un relato seguido, sin pausas, en tercera persona, soliloquio, llamadas y conversaciones se mezclan y desvelan el interior y la apariencia del personaje.
Personaje que no se hace odioso a pesar de su actitud con su antigua compañera de lycée, más bien inspira lástima.
Comprobé hace unos años al leer “Heureux les Heureux” que Yasmina Reza se maneja muy bien, con soltura y mezcla de sutileza y sentido del humor, escribiendo relatos. Luego "Babylone", una obra con diálogos mordaces y sarcásticos, que se convierte en una novela a medio camino entre la novela negra y la farsa o “Serge”, un texto magnifico, lleno de ternura, humor y profundidad.
Adam Haberberg es un hombre de cuarenta y siete años en plena crisis existencial (la llamada crisis masculina -que no machista- de los cuarenta).
Nos lo encontramos, sentado en el jardin animalier del Jardin des Plantes contemplando una pareja de avestruces y ensimismado en la amargura de sus nubarrones, en la frustración de su vida. Se mezclan en su cabeza su fracaso como escritor, su hipocondría, su consulta médica, el fiasco de su vida conyugal con Irène, la decepción del fin de semana en armonía familiar en el Cotentin.
Cuando de pronto se acerca hacia él una antigua compañera de lycée, Marie-Thérèse Lyoc, sin interés para él en aquella época, con la que no había tenido apenas contacto ni cuando eran compañeros ni en los treinta años posteriores. Ahora una mujer igual de anodina. Al final termina acompañándola a su casa sin un verdadero interés. La transparencia de ella, su interés por su época de estudios, sus compañeros olvidados y sus vidas actuales contrasta con el sentimiento de superioridad de él, su sufrimiento interior, con su sarcasmo ante esa mujer simple pero sincera a la que no cuenta sus fracasos, miente y pretende ser quien no es.
Un relato seguido, sin pausas, en tercera persona, soliloquio, llamadas y conversaciones se mezclan y desvelan el interior y la apariencia del personaje.
Personaje que no se hace odioso a pesar de su actitud con su antigua compañera de lycée, más bien inspira lástima.
Read
December 8, 2023I think I would be pretty mad if a monster who is deservedly a pariah bought the rights to my award winning play. Yasmina Reza had the unfortunate circumstances of having her play The God of Carnage bought up by Roman Polanski and turned into a movie.
Anyway, this is an earlier novel that starts with an almost 50 sadsack of a writer fresh off a divorce and nursing a recent glaucoma diagnosis that could leave him blind in one of his eyes. He is thinking of that and the worsening receptions of his three novels (moderate acclaim, sharp criticism, ignorance). He happens upon an old flame who seems to harbor some of her old feelings and despite their mutual age, he feels the worse for it.
They talk for a while, leave to eat dinner, and that’s pretty much the whole novel. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a playwright makes the action of this short novel relatively simple.
This novel reminds me of a few different things. For one, Adele Waldman’s novel Nathanael P comes to mind, as does a number of Nicholson Baker novels.
It got me thinking about how we come across other people and how they come across to us. Especially when you notice your age for the first time in a long time, maybe when an activity you used to be involved with grows harder or an old pair of clothes no longer fit or you see someone from your past, you think in terms so clearly of being in the act of growing older. I can’t say that I always work in these terms. I am younger than the main character here, but I still sometimes think about myself in a kind of kinetic aging way. But I OFTEN see others this way. It’s like I look at their life and can’t help imagine them at a farther extreme version of the life they’re living, like a kind of what happens if this continues for the next 15 years kind of thing.
Oh well.
The novel itself is just ok.
Anyway, this is an earlier novel that starts with an almost 50 sadsack of a writer fresh off a divorce and nursing a recent glaucoma diagnosis that could leave him blind in one of his eyes. He is thinking of that and the worsening receptions of his three novels (moderate acclaim, sharp criticism, ignorance). He happens upon an old flame who seems to harbor some of her old feelings and despite their mutual age, he feels the worse for it.
They talk for a while, leave to eat dinner, and that’s pretty much the whole novel. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a playwright makes the action of this short novel relatively simple.
This novel reminds me of a few different things. For one, Adele Waldman’s novel Nathanael P comes to mind, as does a number of Nicholson Baker novels.
It got me thinking about how we come across other people and how they come across to us. Especially when you notice your age for the first time in a long time, maybe when an activity you used to be involved with grows harder or an old pair of clothes no longer fit or you see someone from your past, you think in terms so clearly of being in the act of growing older. I can’t say that I always work in these terms. I am younger than the main character here, but I still sometimes think about myself in a kind of kinetic aging way. But I OFTEN see others this way. It’s like I look at their life and can’t help imagine them at a farther extreme version of the life they’re living, like a kind of what happens if this continues for the next 15 years kind of thing.
Oh well.
The novel itself is just ok.
March 7, 2016
The blurb about this being a "nonhero's big adventure" is an accurate description. Nothing really happens in this book. The title character encounters a woman from his past, goes home with her and has dinner.
What makes the book good, along with confusing at times, is the writing. There is a constant jump between Adam's thoughts and his actual conversations with Marie-Therese. Sometimes, the formatting clues you in on these jumps, but sometimes it doesn't and that took me out of the story a bit. Reza tackles the internal conflict and utter confusion of Adam quite beautifully. The formatting however, and the jump from clear areas of dialogue to less clear sections, takes away from her talent for me. I'm not sure if that was intentional or possibly a change made in the translation. Nevertheless, I had a few people in mind to recommend it to while I was reading, which speaks to my own enjoyment of this very short, gladly uneventful novel.
What makes the book good, along with confusing at times, is the writing. There is a constant jump between Adam's thoughts and his actual conversations with Marie-Therese. Sometimes, the formatting clues you in on these jumps, but sometimes it doesn't and that took me out of the story a bit. Reza tackles the internal conflict and utter confusion of Adam quite beautifully. The formatting however, and the jump from clear areas of dialogue to less clear sections, takes away from her talent for me. I'm not sure if that was intentional or possibly a change made in the translation. Nevertheless, I had a few people in mind to recommend it to while I was reading, which speaks to my own enjoyment of this very short, gladly uneventful novel.
August 13, 2017
Jasmína Rezavá je takovej Mišel Hulibrk v sukni, což sem si pamatoval už od Nenávisti a tento pocit jsem si ještě trochu víc připomněl při čtení Adama Habebebe nebo jak to je. Tedy klasický portrét středně starýho a středně neúspěšnýho francouze s kroasántem mezi nohama místo na talíři. Dát to Jasmína a Mišel dohromady, pravděpodobně by se jim narodila čirá ubohost.
Nicméně, Jasmína se má ještě co učit. I když je její text břitký a smutný a všechny ty francouzský přídavný jména, pořád to vypadá jen jako rozcvička před pořádnou apokalypsou, kterou by někdo vystihl lépe. Tudíž je to taková ta knížka, co dobře sype, sem tam vyskočí fakt zajímavá myšlenka nebo výborný dialog (tam je Jasmína nejsilnější), ale ve finále jsem se z toho nepokadil. Což se nedá například říct o mořských šnecích, kterých jsem včera snědl šest a vykadil dvacet. Proč je toto na konci mé recenze? Ani já sám nevím.
Nicméně, Jasmína se má ještě co učit. I když je její text břitký a smutný a všechny ty francouzský přídavný jména, pořád to vypadá jen jako rozcvička před pořádnou apokalypsou, kterou by někdo vystihl lépe. Tudíž je to taková ta knížka, co dobře sype, sem tam vyskočí fakt zajímavá myšlenka nebo výborný dialog (tam je Jasmína nejsilnější), ale ve finále jsem se z toho nepokadil. Což se nedá například říct o mořských šnecích, kterých jsem včera snědl šest a vykadil dvacet. Proč je toto na konci mé recenze? Ani já sám nevím.
June 5, 2007
Oh Yasmina...Beckett you're not.
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